Re: WIP: a way forward on bootstrap data

John Naylor <jcnaylor(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> With the attachments this time.

Layout of .dat files seems generally reasonable, but I don't understand
the proposed make rule:

+reformat-dat-files:
+ $(PERL) -I $(catalogdir) $< catalog/rewrite_dat.pl -o catalog catalog/pg_*.dat

This rule has no prerequisite, so what's $< supposed to be? Also, I think
the rule probably ought to be located in src/include/catalog/Makefile,
because that's typically where you'd be cd'd to when messing with the
.dat files, I'd think. (Hm, I see no such makefile, but maybe it's time
for one. A convenience rule located one level up doesn't seem very
convenient.)

> My clean-up patch tried to make that more consistent. For this sample,
> it would add blank lines before the comments in pg_amop, and remove
> blank lines from the first few entries in pg_type. If you wanted to
> opine on that before I rework that patch, I'd be grateful.

No particular objection to either.

>>> -Maybe document examples of how to do bulk-editing of data files?

>> +1. In the end, that's the reason we're doing all this work, so showing
>> people how to benefit seems like a good thing.

> It seems like with that, it'd be good to split off the data-format
> section of the README into a new file, maybe README.data, which will
> contain code snippets and some example scenarios. I'll include the
> example pg_proc.prokind merger among those.

It would be more work, but maybe we should move this into the main
SGML docs. It seems rather silly to have SGML documentation for the
.BKI file format, which now will be an internal matter that hardly
any developers need worry about, but not for the .DAT file format.
But I understand if that seems a bridge too far for today --- certainly
a README file is way better than nothing.

regards, tom lane